BOULDER --George Ruibal badly beat his girlfriend in the small Longmont apartment that the couple had just rented in December 2007 and then took to caring for her until she succumbed to her injuries, prosecutor Chris Estoll told a Boulder County jury Tuesday morning as Ruibal's second-degree murder trial opened.

Defense attorney Eric Klein, however, told jurors that Ruibal, 58, is innocent, did not beat Dana Pechin, and that she suffered her injuries away from the couple's apartment and at the hands of another man entirely.

George Ruibal

The attorneys' statements came Tuesday morning in Boulder District Court in front of a jury of 10 men and four women, which includes two alternates, who will spend this week and next listening to evidence and arguments. Ruibal was arrested and charged in April 2011 after a Boulder County grand jury reviewed the case and handed down a five-page indictment. Prosecutors took the case to the grand jury after a statewide cold-case task force and an outside police agency reviewed the Longmont Police Department's investigation.

Estoll revealed during opening statements that a man who shared a cell with Ruibal after his arrest would testify that Ruibal confessed the murder to him and that Ruibal said he was sorry he "strangled" his "baby."

Ruibal and Pechin lived together in an apartment on the 300 block of 15th Avenue. He called police to report that he and a co-worker who had given him a ride home found her dead under a blanket on the couch. Her injuries were so severe that police initially suspected she had been in an automobile accident. But about a month after she died, the Boulder County coroner ruled Pechin's death a homicide and determined her cause of death was a closed head injury associated with manual strangulation.

Estoll said that Ruibal had a history of domestic violence with Pechin and became particularly enraged with her shortly after he sold his Jeep to rent the apartment with her and even told an acquaintance that "one of these days I am gonna kill that bitch." Estoll described a beating and strangulation that caused Pechin to urinate in her pants. The prosecutor said Ruibal's rage immediately changed to affection after the beating and he changed her clothing and sat with her as she began the process of dying as a bleed inside of her skull cut off oxygen to her brain.

But she did not recover, Estoll told jurors as he showed them photos of her bruised and swollen face after her death and an autopsy photo of blood collected on the inside of her skull.

Dana Jo Pechin

According to police reports and prosecutors, Ruibal told investigators that Pechin set out alone to go to Albertson's and returned hours later and was "f----ing hurt." He told police she wanted to go to the hospital, but they could not get a ride and that he believed she was getting better. He went to work and returned home to find her dead, he reported.

Police became suspicious of his story because he had a cut on his face that implied he had been in a struggle and Pechin did not appear on the grocery store's surveillance video. Ruibal's DNA was found on her neck, Estoll noted, adding that police and prosecutors believe another man's DNA also found on her neck was likely from third-party contamination.

Klein said evidence in the case will raise more questions than it answers. He told jurors no witnesses will testify that the couple fought the night Pechin was injured, that Ruibal's DNA was on Pechin's neck simply because they were a couple, and that his DNA was under her fingernails for the same reason. Further, Klein said, Ruibal cooperated with police throughout the investigation and never fled. Defense investigators turned up a man named Joel Dorn, who has not cooperated with investigators, who could be responsible for Pechin's death, Klein said.

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